1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a contactor, a contact structure provided with contactors, a probe card, a test apparatus, a method of production of a contact structure, and a production apparatus of a contact structure for contacting pads, electrodes, leads, or other contacts provided on an integrated circuit or other electrical circuit (hereinafter also referred to representatively as an “IC”) formed on a IC semiconductor wafer, semiconductor chip, semiconductor device package, printed circuit board, etc. to establish electric contact with the ICs when testing the ICs.
2. Description of the Related Art
A large number of semiconductor integrated circuit chips are formed on a silicon wafer etc., then are diced, wire bonded, packaged, and otherwise processed to produce finished electronic devices. These ICs are all tested for operation before shipment. This IC test is performed both in the finished product state and in the wafer state.
When testing ICs in the wafer state, as a probe for securing electric contact with a tested IC, there has been known one having a base part having inclinations at its two ends, a beam part with a rear end side provided at the base part and with a front end side sticking out from the base part, and a conductive part formed on the surface of the beam part (hereinafter referred to simply as a “silicon finger contactor”) (for example, see Japanese Patent Publication (A) No. 2000-249722, Japanese Patent Publication (A) No. 2001-159642, and WO03/071289 pamphlet).
This silicon finger contactor is formed by for example photolithography or other semiconductor production technology from a silicon substrate. In particular, when forming the inclinations at the two ends of the base part, the silicon substrate is anistropically etched so as to form inclined surfaces of 54.7° dependent on the crystal plane of silicon. Further, these inclined surfaces are used to give a predetermined angle for the silicon finger contactor to be mounted on the probe board.
When using a probe card provided with such silicon finger contactors to test ICs, the probe card is brought close to the semiconductor wafer and the silicon finger contactors are brought into contact with the pads of the tested ICs. Further, the silicon finger contactors are made to move further toward the pads (overdriven) so that the front ends of the silicon finger contactors scrub the pads so as to remove the aluminum oxide layers formed on the pads and thereby establish electric contact with the tested ICs.
At the time of contact of the silicon finger contactors and pads, variations of the silicon finger contactors in the height direction cause certain silicon finger contactors on the probe board to contact the pads of the ICs first, then the first contacting silicon finger contactors are excessively overdriven until all of the silicon finger contactors provided on the probe board contact the pads of the ICs.
Here, the angles of inclination formed at the base parts of the silicon finger contactors are relatively sharp angles of 54.7° as explained above, so the amount of scrubbing of the silicon finger contactors with respect to the amount of overdrive of the silicon finger contactors first contacting the pads become large (that is, the amount of scrubbing/amount of overdrive becomes large). For that reason, for example, if the size of the pads of the ICs become small, the front ends of the silicon finger contactors end up sticking out from the pads or deforming or becoming damaged.